The script is best called the Perso-Arabic script adapted for Turkish—the writing system later associated with Ottoman Turkish. It is Turkish written in Arabic-Persian letters, not Persian-language poetry.
Mustafa Tatcı’s edition presents this as poem 387, gives the metre Mefâ‘îlün / Mefâ‘îlün / Fe‘ûlün, and cites three manuscript witnesses: F. 206a, T. 89a and Ç. 76a. (Mustafa Tatcı’s Yûnus Emre Dîvânı edition)
The first version below is therefore a normalized back-transcription of Tatcı’s critical Latin text into Perso-Arabic letters. It is not a diplomatic copy of one manuscript page. No manuscript written by Yunus himself—or demonstrably copied during his lifetime—survives, and the important Fatih manuscript is generally dated by its paper and orthography to the fifteenth century. (Ahmet Yesevi University, Dîvân—Yunus Emre)
Photographs from our visit
The shrine photograph places the poem within the setting in which we encountered it.
The shrine of Yunus Emre, photographed during our visit.
دوتولماز اولدی پیغمبر حدیثیخلایق جمله حقدن اوتلو اولدی
یونس گل عاشق ایسن توبه ایلهنصوحا توبه اوجی قوتلو اولدی
The letter ڭ represents the historical nasal consonant written in words such as Taŋrı and göŋül. A particular manuscript might use an ordinary ك instead, since scribal spelling was not uniform.
Yûnus gel ‘âşıkısan tevbe eyleNasûha tevbe ucı kutlu oldı
The poem engraved in marble
The marble monument records the complete poem across two panels. Its Latin-script spelling is partly modernized, so the inscription is best read as a public presentation of the poem rather than as a manuscript witness.
The first marble panel: couplets 1–5.The second marble panel: couplets 6–9.
Photographs: the author’s personal collection.
3. English-reader pronunciation guide
This is an approximate reading aid, not a reconstruction of every feature of fourteenth-century pronunciation.
Yoo-noos gel aa-shuh-kuh-san tev-beh ay-lehNa-soo-ha tev-beh oo-juh koot-loo ol-duh
4. Smooth modern English translation
O Muslims, the age has turned corrupt:the lawful goes uneaten, while the forbidden is prized.
No one lends an ear when the Qur’an is recited;the devils have grown fat and strong.
The world lies in the grip of the forbidden and its ferment;those who spread corruption are held in honour.
Speak to anyone of God and he bristles;he tosses his head and comes armed with arguments.
The pupil quarrels with the master;the son puts on airs before his father.
Those who call themselves faqirs have cast humility aside;breaking hearts, they have made themselves figures of awe.
Teachers who set themselves in the Prophet’s placehave become a burden upon the people.
The Prophet’s teaching is no longer heeded;all creation stands ashamed before the Real.
Yunus, come—if you are a lover, repent:the end of sincere repentance is blessed.
5. Explanation of the poem
The central movement
At first, the poem sounds like a conventional complaint about a corrupt age. Yunus describes a society in which every moral value has been reversed:
What is lawful is neglected.
What is forbidden acquires value.
Revelation is heard but not truly listened to.
Corrupt people receive honour.
Spiritual advice provokes anger rather than reflection.
Teachers, students, children, dervishes and religious leaders all lose the proper adab of their relationships.
But the final couplet radically changes the poem. Yunus does not end by congratulating himself for seeing everyone else’s faults. He turns the command upon himself:
“Yunus, if you are a lover, repent.”
That is the moral hinge of the entire poem. A complaint about “the age” becomes an examination of one’s own conscience.
Yatlu means bad, corrupt or morally disordered. The more forceful idea, however, appears in the second line. Society has not merely fallen into occasional wrongdoing: it has reversed its scale of value. The forbidden has become kıymetlü—precious, esteemed and desirable—while the lawful is left untouched.
Yunus begins with appetite because what people choose to consume, pursue and prize reveals their true moral orientation.
The Qur’an continues to be recited. The failure is not the absence of religious speech but the absence of receptive listening. Kulak tutmak means to lend an ear, attend seriously and heed.
The image of devils “growing fat” is intentionally physical. Every ignored admonition feeds the forces of selfishness, deception and moral indifference. Evil is not presented as abstract: it acquires weight and power through human choices.
Couplet 3: Corruption as fermentation
Harâm ile hamîr tutdı cihânı Fesâd işler iden hürmetlü oldı
Tatcı glosses hamîr as leaven, ferment, the ferment used in drink, or intoxicating drink itself. (Tatcı’s edition) The line therefore carries a fertile double image: the forbidden has both seized the world and worked through it like ferment through dough.
The following line exposes the public dimension of the corruption. Wrongdoing no longer brings shame; it brings hürmet—social respectability. Yunus is concerned not only with private sin but with a culture that rewards and legitimizes it.
Couplet 4: The ego turns counsel into argument
Kime kim Tanrı’dan haber virürsen Kakır başın salar hüccetlü oldı
Kakımak means to become angry. Hüccet means proof, evidence or a supposedly decisive argument. Tatcı defines hüccetlü as someone possessing an argument that cannot easily be rejected. (Tatcı’s edition)
The irony is sharp. When someone is reminded of God, instead of becoming receptive, he becomes angry and immediately produces arguments in his own defence. Religious language has ceased to transform the ego and has instead become material with which the ego protects itself.
Couplet 5: The collapse of formative relationships
The pupil quarrels with the master, while the son assumes airs before his father. The point is not unquestioning obedience to authority. It is the disappearance of humility, gratitude and teachability.
Both relationships—pupil and master, child and parent—should transmit wisdom across generations. When every correction is treated as an insult and every learner insists upon his own status, knowledge may remain, but formation disappears.
This is one of the poem’s most important couplets. Fakîr does not refer only to someone materially poor. It is also the Sufi who recognizes his complete poverty before God. Likewise, miskînlik means far more than passivity or indigence. In Tatcı’s glossary it denotes the abandonment of selfhood and is associated with fanāʾ fi’Llāh—the surrender of the ego before God. (Tatcı’s edition)
Thus the couplet means:
Those who bear the name of spiritual poverty have abandoned its inner reality.
Instead of healing hearts, they break them.
Instead of becoming humble, they cultivate heybet—an imposing, intimidating presence.
This is an internal Sufi criticism. Yunus does not spare his own religious community.
Couplet 7: Religious authority without Prophetic mercy
Peygamber yirine geçen hocalar Bu halkun başına zahmetlü oldı
Yunus is not rejecting teachers as such. His criticism is specifically directed at teachers who place themselves in the Prophet’s position while failing to embody the Prophet’s mercy, service and moral character.
They possess religious status but become zahmet—a hardship and burden—to the people. Their authority serves themselves rather than those entrusted to their care.
There is also a carefully constructed verbal contrast:
hürmetlü: honoured
heybetlü: imposing
zahmetlü: burdensome
What looks like religious dignity from the outside may, in practice, become suffering for others.
Here dutmak means more than physically holding something. It means keeping, observing or living according to it. The Prophet’s teaching may still be repeated, but it is no longer embodied.
Halâyık means created beings or humankind, while utlu means modest, shamefaced or filled with a sense of shame. (Tatcı’s edition) Thus all creation stands ashamed before al-Ḥaqq—“the Real,” one of the names of God.
The word Hak is particularly meaningful. It means both God and Truth. A society that has inverted truth must eventually stand exposed before the Real.
Couplet 9: From accusation to repentance
Yûnus gel ‘âşıkısan tevbe eyle Nasûha tevbe ucı kutlu oldı
The phrase nasûha tevbe recalls the Qur’anic command:
tūbū ilā Llāhi tawbatan naṣūḥā “Turn to God in sincere repentance.” — Qur’an 66:8. (Quran.com)
This is not a reference to a person named Nasuh. It means a sincere, healing and irrevocable repentance: leaving the wrong, regretting it and resolving not to return to it.
Uç means “end, outcome or final consequence.” (Tatcı’s edition) Yunus therefore closes with hope: the blessed outcome does not belong to the person who diagnoses the age most eloquently, but to the person who sincerely repents.
The poem’s verbal architecture
The repeated ending oldı—“it became”—sounds almost like a tolling bell. Each couplet registers another stage in society’s transformation:
Most of these words describe distorted value, power, reputation or authority. Yet the final rhyme changes direction:
kutlu oldı — “its end became blessed.”
The same verbal pattern that recorded corruption now announces the possibility of renewal. That is why the final couplet is indispensable: without it, the poem would be only a denunciation of others. With it, the poem becomes a Sufi act of self-accounting.
In my reading of these celebrated verses, Ibn ʿArabī describes a heart made spacious by love: a heart able to receive many forms without mistaking any single form for the whole of the Divine Reality. It is not emptied of conviction. It is freed from confusing the form it knows with the fullness of God.
These are verses 13–15 of Ode XI in Ibn ʿArabī’s Tarjumān al-Ashwāq, not a separate poem. Michael Sells shows how the full ode moves through longing, pilgrimage, the Kaʿba, and the transformation of the lover’s heart. In Ibn ʿArabī’s own commentary, the heart receives different forms because divine self-disclosures vary. He then explains the “religion of Love” through Qurʾān 3:31, joining love to the path of following the Prophet ﷺ.
The Poem
Below I give a fully vocalized Arabic text, a readable transliteration, and my own translation. I retain the attested reading فَالْحُبُّ دِينِي وَإِيمَانِي. One printed base text reads فَالدِّينُ and records فَالْحُبُّ as the reading of another copy.
My heart has become receptive to every form:a pasture for gazelles and a monastery for monks;a house for idols and a Kaʿba for the circling pilgrim,tablets of the Torah and a codex of the Qurʾān.I follow the religion of Love: wherever its mounts turn,Love is my religion and my faith.
In the transliteration, ā and ī mark long vowels, ṣ is an emphatic s, ḥ is a deeper h, and ʿ and ʾ represent ʿayn and hamzah. The standard readings are ghizlān and muṣḥaf.
“Receptive to every form.” Ibn ʿArabī connects qalb, heart, with taqallub, continual turning: the heart changes as divine self-disclosures come to it in differing forms.
marʿan… dayrun… baytun… Kaʿbah
مَرْعًى… دَيْرٌ… بَيْتٌ… كَعْبَةٌ
The heart becomes landscape, monastery, shrine, and place of pilgrimage. The deliberately contrasting images express its breadth, not the disappearance of every distinction.
alwāḥu Tawrātin wa-muṣḥafu Qurʾān
أَلْوَاحُ تَوْرَاةٍ وَمُصْحَفُ قُرْآنِ
“Tablets of the Torah and a codex of the Qurʾān.” In his commentary, Ibn ʿArabī associates them respectively with Mosaic knowledge and the complete Muhammadan inheritance received by the heart.
dīn al-ḥubb… rakāʾibuhu
دِينُ الْحُبِّ… رَكَائِبُهُ
The “religion of Love” and “its mounts.” The literal image is of riding animals changing direction. Ibn ʿArabī reads it as receiving the Beloved’s commands with acceptance, contentment, and love.
The Heart Made Spacious by Love
The imagery expands in stages. The heart becomes a landscape, then a sacred building, then a book. Gazelles may roam within it; monks may dwell in it; pilgrims may circle it; revelations may be inscribed upon it. Love does not make the heart blank. It enlarges its capacity to receive.
This is why I would not reduce these verses to the claim that all religions or beliefs are interchangeable. Ibn ʿArabī’s own explanation is more demanding. The heart must not imprison the Divine within a single “god of belief,” yet the religion of Love remains grounded in divine unity and Prophetic guidance. As William Chittick explains, it is a path to be practiced, not permission to follow every personal preference.
A spacious heart does not abandon conviction. It abandons the desire to make its own understanding the measure of God. It learns to recognize a divine sign without claiming that any one sign exhausts the One to whom it points. The heart receives every form, while Love keeps it turned toward God.
In these Arabic couplets, Majnūn does not love the walls merely as walls. The dwellings have become dear through their association with Laylā: the place is precious because it carries the trace of the one he loves.
These famous lines are conventionally attributed to Qays ibn al-Mulawwaḥ, remembered as Majnūn Laylā. The attribution should remain cautious. Al-Jāḥiẓ observed that verse of unknown authorship mentioning Laylā was attributed to Majnūn. By al-Ghazālī’s time, the lines were already in circulation; in the Iḥyāʾ, he quotes them as the words of “Majnūn Banī ʿĀmir.”
The Poem
Below, I give a normalized Arabic text, a readable transliteration, and my own translation. I retain the wording used in the Iḥyāʾ:
وَمَا حُبُّ الدِّيَارِ
Wa-mā ḥubbu l-diyāri
Another version in al-Ghazālī’s al-Mustaṣfā reads:
Wa-mā ḥubbu l-diyāri shaghafna qalbīWa-lākin ḥubbu man sakana l-diyārā
I pass by the dwellings—the dwellings of Laylā—and kiss this wall and that wall.
It is not love of the dwellings that has taken hold of my heart,but love of the one who dwelt there.
Conventionally attributed to Qays ibn al-Mulawwaḥ, known as Majnūn Laylā. Translation by the author.
In the transliteration, ā and ī mark long vowels, ḥ is a deeper h, and ʿ marks ʿayn. The final -ā of jidārā and diyārā sustains the rhyme.
Words and Meanings
Key expressions in the Arabic poem
Expression
Meaning and significance
al-diyār
الدِّيَارُ
The plural of dār: dwellings, habitations, or an encampment. It evokes more than buildings; it holds the life and memory once present there.
dhā al-jidār wa-dhā al-jidār
ذَا الْجِدَارَ وَذَا الْجِدَارَ
Literally, “this wall and this wall.” The repetition makes each wall immediate; “this wall and that wall” is the natural English idiom.
shaghafna qalbī
شَغَفْنَ قَلْبِي
“Have taken hold of my heart.” The same root describes love penetrating the heart in Qurʾān 12:30. Grammarians cite the line because the masculine head noun ḥubb takes feminine-plural agreement from its genitive complement al-diyār.
man sakana al-diyār
مَنْ سَكَنَ الدِّيَارَ
“The one who dwelt there.” The perfect verb recalls Laylā’s dwelling there; set against Majnūn’s continuing “I pass” and “I kiss,” it deepens the sense of absence.
The Trace and the Beloved
The second verse does not undo the first; it explains it. Majnūn kisses the walls, then names the true cause of the kiss. Laylā is absent, yet her absence fills the poem with place. The dwellings become particular because she inhabited them.
Al-Ghazālī’s Spiritual Analogy
Al-Ghazālī reads this relational logic as a sign of overpowering love: affection extends from the beloved to clothing, home, neighborhood, and whatever is connected with the beloved. He then applies the principle to love of God, which should awaken love for what bears relation to Him. Yet the poem itself is human love poetry, not an explicitly Sufi composition. Its spiritual meaning is an analogical reading, and that distinction matters.
The Wall as a Trace, Not a Destination
For a spiritual reader, then, the wall may become a trace, not a destination. This does not mean that a created thing contains the Divine or possesses holiness of its own. Its value lies in remembrance: it points beyond itself. That is the lesson I take from Majnūn’s distinction—the walls are dear, but the true love belongs to the one who gave them meaning.
Iqbal on revelation and the formation of a community
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
Bismi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm.
In the name of God, the All Merciful, the Ever Merciful
Iqbal asks us to consider what happens when the Qur’an becomes the source from which a community learns how to live. His answer includes worship, but also the education of desire, the recovery of human dignity, the pursuit of knowledge, and the responsible exercise of power. The Book reaches into the heart and from there into the relationships through which a society takes shape.
This passage forms a complete chapter of Iqbal’s Persian poem Rumūz-i Bēkhudī, published in 1918 and commonly known in English as The Secrets of Selflessness. Its title states the argument: “On how a community’s order cannot take shape without a governing way, and how the governing way of the community of Muhammad is the Qur’an.” All thirty-four couplets appear below, in their original order, with a fresh English translation and commentary. [1]
The word āʾīn carries much of the argument. It can mean law, a rule of life, an established way, or an ordering principle. “Constitution” catches something of its public importance, but suggests a narrower, modern political document. Iqbal’s examples are a flower, a melody, and the breath passing through a reed. His concern is with the order that gives living things coherence. When he identifies the Muslim community’s āʾīn with the Qur’an, he is speaking about the source of its shared moral and spiritual life, including its law.
As the poem proceeds, praise gives way to a demand. A community may possess the Book, teach its words to children, and honor its reciters, while allowing habits and religious institutions to determine how it actually lives. Iqbal brings that possibility before the reader without exempting the Sufi gathering or the preacher’s pulpit.
The order that makes a community
ملتی را رفت چون آئین ز دستمثل خاک اجزای او از هم شکست
Mellatī rā raft chon āyīn ze dastMesl-e khāk ajzā-ye ū az ham shekast
When a community loses its guiding order,its parts fall apart like scattered dust.
هستی مسلم ز آئین است و بسباطن دین نبی این است و بس
Hastī-ye moslem ze āyīn ast o basBāten-e dīn-e nabī īn ast o bas
The Muslim’s being rests on this way alone;this is the inner substance of the Prophet’s faith.
Iqbal’s millat is the community of faith. Translating it simply as “nation” can obscure the religious belonging at issue. He is asking what enables people to sustain a common life when private interests pull them apart. Their shared profession of faith must acquire a form in which they can live together.
The phrase bāṭin-i dīn, “the inward substance of religion,” places the inward life within Iqbal’s discussion of a community’s ordering principles. The connection with God has consequences for conduct, obligation, and the claims that other people have upon us.
بَرگ گُل شد چون ز آئین بسته شدگل ز آئین بسته شد گلدسته شد
Barg gol shod chon ze āyīn baste shodGol ze āyīn baste shod goldaste shod
Petals form a flower when joined in order;flowers, joined in order, become a bouquet.
نغمه از ضبط صدا پیداستیضبط چون رفت از صدا غوغاستی
Naghme az zabt-e sedā peydāstīZabt chon raft az sedā ghowghāstī
Melody arises when sound is given measure;when measure is lost, sound becomes clamor.
در گلوی ما نفس موج هواستچون هوا پابند نی گردد، نواست
In our throats, breath is a wave of air;held within the reed, that air becomes music.
These images explain the kind of discipline Iqbal values. The flower gathers its petals into a living form. Musical measure allows sound to become intelligible and beautiful. The reed gives breath a voice. Each image shows a capacity brought to fulfillment through an appropriate form.
Here the air becomes music by being “bound” to the reed, an image that introduces a tension the poem will develop. A few lines later the Qur’an releases people from bondage. The distinction lies in what a bond does to a person. A discipline that forms the conscience can enable freedom; a power that claims possession of another person diminishes it.
The living Book
تو همی دانی که آئین تو چیست؟زیر گردون سِرّ تمکین تو چیست؟
To hamī dānī ke āyīn-e to chīst?Zīr-e gardūn serr-e tamkīn-e to chīst?
Do you know what your guiding way is,the secret of your firm standing beneath the heavens?
آن کتاب زنده قرآن حکیمحکمت او لایزال است و قدیم
Ān ketāb-e zende Qorʾān-e hakīmHekmat-e ū lāyazāl ast o qadīm
It is that living Book, the wise Qur’an,whose wisdom is without end and without beginning.
نسخهٔ اسرار تکوین حیاتبیثبات از قوتش گیرد ثبات
Noskhe-ye asrār-e takvīn-e hayātBī-sabāt az qovvatash gīrad sabāt
A book of the mysteries of life’s formation;through its strength, the unsteady gain firm ground.
Tamkīn suggests firmness, established standing, and the capacity to hold one’s place. “Immense power” puts more into the word than this line requires. Iqbal’s question concerns the foundation on which a community can stand.
His answer, “that living Book,” addresses the hearer personally: the Qur’an speaks to their present condition. Its wisdom can expose a disorder in the heart, bring an immature desire into focus, or give someone the strength to act upon a truth already recognized. The phrase “life’s formation” is correspondingly broad. It should not be turned into a claim that the Qur’an supplies a technical explanation of every natural process.
“Without beginning” renders qadīm in its strong theological register; lāyazāl supplies the complementary sense of that which does not cease. Iqbal is affirming the enduring divine wisdom of revelation. The line itself does not develop the theological distinctions concerning divine speech and its expression in a written or recited text.
Its word admits no doubt, no alteration;its verse is not beholden to interpretation.
The second line is difficult to translate without resolving an ambiguity that belongs to the original. Sharmanda can suggest being embarrassed, put to shame, or placed under an obligation. Iqbal gives revelation an authority that does not wait upon an interpreter’s permission. A reasonable contextual reading is that interpretation must answer to the Book, rather than make the Book accommodate whatever the interpreter wishes to preserve. That is an explanation of the line, not a replacement for its wording.
The surrounding work makes his concern for continuity unmistakable. The next chapter argues that, during a period of decline, following inherited guidance is preferable to the independent judgments of inadequately prepared scholars. His later Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam gives greater scope to renewed interpretation and ijtihād. Both emphases belong to Iqbal; the later argument should not erase the severity of the earlier one. [2–3]
Freedom and the dignity of worship
پختهتر سودای خام از زور اودر فتد با سنگ، جام از زور او
Pokhte-tar sowdā-ye khām az zūr-e ūDar fetad bā sang, jām az zūr-e ū
Through its strength, unripe longing ripens;through its strength, a cup dares to challenge stone.
میبُرَد پابند و آزاد آوردصیدبندان را به فریاد آورد
Mī-borad pāband o āzād āvaradSeydbandān rā be faryād āvarad
It cuts through fetters and brings people forth free;it makes those who ensnare others cry out.
The cup begins as an image of fragility; Iqbal gives it the audacity to challenge stone. The image concerns a change in the person who confronts danger. The first line also describes the maturation of longing. Desire acquires purpose and steadiness. This matters because religious passion can remain impulsive even when it feels intense.
The captor in the next couplet is more specific than a general “transgressor.” Ṣaydbandān evokes those who trap and bind their prey. Liberation disturbs the people who profit from another’s captivity. The image also recalls the Qur’anic description of the Messenger lifting burdens and shackles from those who follow him. [4]
نوع انسان را پیام آخرینحامل او رَحْمَة لِلْعَالَمِينَ
The final message to humankind,borne by the Mercy to all the worlds.
ارج میگیرد ازو ناارجمندبنده را از سجده سازد سربلند
Arj mī-gīrad azū nā-arjomandBande rā az sajde sāzad sarboland
Through it, the disregarded acquire honor;through prostration, it raises the servant’s head.
The title “Mercy to all the worlds” refers to the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, through Qur’an 21:107. Keeping “the worlds” preserves the breadth of al-ʿālamīn. The poem’s concern with Muslim communal life is thus placed beside a message addressed to humanity and carried by a messenger described through mercy. [4]
The next couplet joins humility before God to dignity among human beings. “The disregarded” conveys the condition of someone denied esteem without calling that person inherently worthless. Banda can mean servant or slave; in these verses its devotional and social associations reinforce one another. Bowing before God loosens the authority of those who demand a degrading submission to themselves. Within the poem’s argument, a religious authority that cultivates such submission has reason to hear these lines as a rebuke.
Knowledge carried in human hearts
رهزنان از حفظ او رهبر شدنداز کتابی صاحب دفتر شدند
Rahzanān az hefz-e ū rahbar shodandAz ketābī sāheb-e daftar shodand
By learning and keeping it, highwaymen became guides;through one Book, they became people of learning and record.
دشتپیمایان ز تاب یک چراغصد تجلی از علوم اندر دماغ
Dasht-peymāyān ze tāb-e yek cherāghSad tajallī az ʿolūm andar demāgh
Desert travelers, by the light of a single lamp,found a hundred illuminations of knowledge in their minds.
The movement from rahzan, one who robs the road, to rahbar, one who guides upon it, gives moral change a concrete form. The person who made travel dangerous becomes someone through whom others can pass safely. The image offers a demanding measure of religious education: what our learning makes possible for other people.
Ḥifẓ includes memorization and preservation. “Learning and keeping” allows the line to retain both senses. Ṣāḥib-i daftar evokes possession of books, written records, and the learning or authority associated with them. It does not identify a particular official rank. The next couplet describes knowledge becoming luminous in the mind; it does not say that its subjects mastered every science.
Iqbal compresses a civilizational history into an image of a lamp. It is an idealizing poetic account of what revelation can make possible. A historical account would also have to examine institutions, political conditions, and the contributions of many peoples. The poem’s immediate interest is in the learner whose capacities awaken under the influence of the Book.
آنکه دوش کوه بارش برنتافتسطوت او زَهرهٔ گردون شکافت
Look: that treasure of all our hopesfinds room within the breasts of our children.
The mountain recalls Qur’an 59:21, where a mountain receiving the Qur’an would humble itself and split apart in awe of God. There may also be a resonance with the trust that the mountains decline in 33:72. The first is the closer reference because Iqbal’s subject here is the Book. In the Persian idiom, the splitting of zahre, the gallbladder, expresses terror; it is not a reference to the planet Venus. [4]
Iqbal then turns from cosmic magnitude to a child’s breast. The juxtaposition honors the astonishing intimacy of memorization: what overwhelms the mountain can be carried by a child. He gives no warrant for treating memorization lightly. The wider poem does, however, require us to ask how the words preserved in memory become intelligible in a growing life. Children need adults whose conduct helps them recognize the truth of what they recite. Patience in the classroom and fairness in the home belong to that responsibility.
From the desert to a common life
آن جِگر تاب بیابان کمآبچشم او احمر ز سوز آفتاب
Ān jegar-tāb-e biyābān-e kam-ābChashm-e ū ahmar ze sūz-e āftāb
That man, scorched inwardly in a waterless desert,his eyes reddened by the burning sun;
خوشتر از آهو رَم جَمّازهاشگرم چون آتش دَم جَمّازهاش
Khoshtar az āhū ram-e jammāze-ashGarm chon ātash dam-e jammāze-ash
his riding camel’s bound more graceful than a gazelle’s,its breath as hot as fire;
رخت خواب افکنده در زیر نخیلصبحدم بیدار از بانگ رحیل
Rakht-e khāb afkande dar zīr-e nakhīlSobhdam bīdār az bāng-e rahīl
he spreads his bedding beneath the palms,and wakes at dawn to the call to depart;
دشتسیر از بام و در ناآشناهرزه گردد از حَضَر ناآشنا
Dasht-seyr az bām o dar nā-āshenāHarze gardad az hazar nā-āshenā
a traveler of the desert, unfamiliar with roof and door,wandering, a stranger to settled life—
تا دلش از گرمی قرآن تپیدموج بیتابش چو گوهر آرمید
Tā delash az garmī-ye Qorʾān tapīdMowj-e bī-tābash cho gowhar āramīd
when his heart began to beat with the Qur’an’s warmth,its restless wave grew still like a pearl.
The passage takes time to establish the traveler’s bodily life: heat, thirst, animal movement, sleep, and departure. The Qur’an reaches him within that life. Its warmth is distinguished from the sun’s heat by what it brings about in his heart.
The wave and the pearl give this change its form. Both belong to the imagery of the sea, but the wave is dispersed and unsettled while the pearl has acquired a concentrated, enduring shape. That contrast helps explain the stillness here: the traveler is about to act in the world with considerable force. His repose makes purposeful action possible.
خواند ز آیات مبین او سبقبنده آمد، خواجه رفت از پیش حق
Khānd ze āyāt-e mobīn-e ū sabaqBande āmad, khāje raft az pīsh-e Haqq
He learned his lesson from its clear verses;he came before God a slave, and left a master.
از جهانبانی نوازد ساز اومسند جم گشت پاانداز او
Az jahānbānī navāzad sāz-e ūMasnad-e Jam gasht pā-andāz-e ū
His instrument sounded the music of dominion;Jamshīd’s throne became a carpet at his feet.
شهرها از گرد پایش ریختندصد چمن از یک گلش انگیختند
Shahrhā az gard-e pāyash rīkhtandSad chaman az yek golash angīkhtand
Cities sprang from the dust beneath his feet;a hundred gardens arose from his single flower.
Ḥaqq can mean truth, but az pīsh-i Ḥaqq here means “from the presence of God,” the Real. The reversal from slave to master carries a social and political force as well as an inward one. The next couplet makes that force explicit: jahānbānī concerns rule or dominion, and Jamshīd is the legendary Persian king whose throne signifies royal splendor.
Iqbal is celebrating the emergence of a community capable of founding cities and exercising power. His rhetoric retains the language of conquest. We should neither conceal that language nor assume that political success by itself proves fidelity to revelation. The poem has already named mercy and liberation among the Book’s effects. Those claims provide grounds on which to examine the use of the power he celebrates.
When custom takes the place of faith
ای گرفتار رسوم ایمان توشیوههای کافری زندان تو
Ey gereftār-e rosūm īmān-e toShīve-hā-ye kāferī zendān-e to
You whose faith is held captive by customs,whose prison is made of the ways of unbelief;
قطع کردی امر خود را در زبرجادهپیمای إِلَىٰ «شَيْءٍ نُكُرٍ»
Qatʿ kardī amr-e khod rā dar zoborJādde-peymā-ye ilā “shayʾin nukur”
you have split your common faith into fragments,and travel the road toward “a thing of dread.”
گر تو میخواهی مسلمان زیستننیست ممکن جز به قرآن زیستن
Gar to mī-khāhī mosalmān zīstanNīst momken joz be Qorʾān zīstan
If you wish to live as a Muslim,you can do so only by living by the Qur’an.
The address turns directly upon the reader. Religious custom becomes a prison when it prevents a community from responding to the revelation it professes to follow. Kāfirī is forceful language: “the ways of unbelief” retains its severity. In this address to Muslims, the accusation exposes a contradiction within professed faith. The couplet supplies neither a catalog of forbidden local customs nor a ruling on named individuals.
The next verse draws two Qur’anic passages together. Amr and zubur recall 23:53, where people divide their religious affair into factions, each pleased with its own portion. Iqbal’s complaint therefore concerns fragmentation and sectarian self-satisfaction more specifically than a general loss of heritage. The phrase ilā shayʾin nukur comes from 54:6, with its dreadful summons on the Day of Resurrection. “A detestable end” loses that weight of judgment. [4]
“Living by the Qur’an” gathers the poem’s earlier claims into an obligation. A person must allow the Book to act upon desires, loyalties, and habits. The line becomes uncomfortable where loyalty to a custom prevents us from hearing a demand already clear in revelation.
The Sufi, clad in wool, intoxicated with his spiritual state,is drunk on the wine of the qawwāl’s song.
آتش از شعر عراقی در دلشدرنمیسازد به قرآن محفلش
Ātash az sheʿr-e ʿErāqī dar delashDar nemī-sāzad be Qorʾān mahfelash
ʿIrāqī’s poetry sets a fire within his heart,yet his gathering is out of tune with the Qur’an.
The Persian requires care. Pashmīna-pūsh means dressed in wool, carrying the association of the ascetic’s garment. “Pashmina garbs” suggests a luxury fabric to many modern readers. Ḥāl is a spiritual state, and qawwāl identifies the devotional singer. The wine belongs to the poem’s imagery of intoxication.
Iqbal’s second couplet concerns the gathering, maḥfil. It does not call the Qur’an “austere,” and it does not say that its reader must be untouched by beauty or feeling. Earlier in the same poem the Qur’an warms a heart; breath becomes music, longing ripens, and a lamp illumines the mind. Iqbal pictures an assembly moved by mystical poetry but out of accord with the Qur’an. That failure also raises a question about the conduct its fervor produces.
ʿIrāqī is Fakhr al-Dīn Ibrāhīm ʿIrāqī, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. He studied with Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī, and his Lamaʿāt developed under the influence of Qūnawī’s teaching of Ibn ʿArabī. That history matters: the listener’s neglect of the Qur’an cannot simply be assigned to the poet whose work moves him. Iqbal’s lines criticize the gathering’s spiritual priorities; they do not establish that ʿIrāqī’s own teaching was detached from revelation. [5]
The criticism remains sharp: religious feeling can become something repeatedly sought for its own sake. An assembly may become practiced at producing an atmosphere in which its members feel transformed, while leaving established privileges and ordinary behavior undisturbed. This is a contemporary application of the poem’s question, rather than a claim that every gathering of devotional listening fits Iqbal’s portrait.
از کلاه و بوریا تاج و سریرفقر او از خانقاهان باجگیر
Az kolāh o būriyā tāj o sarīrFaqr-e ū az khānqāhān bāj-gīr
His cap and reed mat have become a crown and throne;his poverty exacts tribute from the Sufi lodges.
The symbols of renunciation have become instruments of status. The cap is a crown, the mat a throne, and faqr, spiritual poverty, collects revenue. Bāj, tribute or tax, makes the satire more severe than a neutral reference to donations. Iqbal portrays an authority that claims the prestige of having renounced the world while drawing income and submission from its institutions.
This is a criticism a Sufi reader must take seriously. Dependence upon God can be professed in a way that encourages other people’s dependence upon the teacher. The claim to have overcome the ego can itself become difficult to question. Iqbal’s images give us reason to examine the actual relations of power surrounding a claim to spiritual attainment.
His broader writings also prevent us from making this portrait his entire judgment on Sufism. In the preface to the Reconstruction, he acknowledges the work of authentic Sufi schools in developing religious experience while questioning the adequacy of their later methods. That distinction matters when reading his criticism here. [3]
واعظ دستانزن افسانهبندمعنی او پست و حرف او بلند
Vāʿez-e dastān-zan-e afsāne-bandMaʿnī-ye ū past o harf-e ū boland
The preacher spins his tales and strings his stories;his meaning is low, though his words rise high.
از خطیب و دیلمی گفتار اوبا ضعیف و شاذّ و مرسل کار او
Az Khatīb o Deylamī goftār-e ūBā zaʿīf o shāzz o morsal kār-e ū
His discourse draws on Khaṭīb and Daylamī;he deals in weak, anomalous, and mursal reports.
The pulpit faces the same scrutiny as the lodge. The preacher has stories and an impressive delivery, but little substance. The Persian says that he uses certain kinds of reports. It does not say that he is occupied in scholarly arguments about their authenticity.
The hadith terms must retain their distinctions. Ḍaʿīf means weak: a report does not meet the requirements of sound or good transmission. Shādhdh, in a widely used technical sense, describes an otherwise acceptable transmitter’s report that conflicts with stronger transmission; mere rarity does not establish this defect. Mursal conventionally describes a Successor attributing a report directly to the Prophet with the intervening transmitter or transmitters unnamed. Scholars differed over the evidential standing of such reports. None of these terms simply means “fabricated.” [6]
“Khaṭīb” most plausibly refers to al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, the distinguished historian and hadith scholar. “Daylamī” likely evokes the Firdaws tradition associated with Shīrūya al-Daylamī and his son Shahradār. The surname alone does not settle which work Iqbal intends. His satire targets the preacher’s handling of inherited material; it gives no basis for dismissing the entire scholarship associated with these names. [7]
Both scenes concern an authority or performance that can absorb attention while weakening the hearer’s relationship with the Qur’an. The lesson applies to the reader of Iqbal as well: admiration for the poet can become another way of postponing the work his poetry asks of us.
The Book has a claim upon us
از تلاوت بر تو حق دارد کتابتو ازو کامی که میخواهی بیاب
Az telāvat bar to haqq dārad ketābTo azū kāmī ke mī-khāhī biyāb
The Book has a claim upon you: that you recite it;seek within it the fulfillment you desire.
Iqbal ends by returning to recitation. The wording should be respected. “The Book demands more than recitation” may express a conclusion drawn from the chapter, but it is not a literal translation of this couplet. The Persian explicitly affirms the Book’s claim to be recited and invites the reader to seek fulfillment in it.
The invitation follows a poem in which longing itself is educated. It cannot reasonably mean that the Qur’an will endorse whatever we happen to want. The reader who seeks its guidance must be willing to discover that a cherished desire needs correction.
Al-Ghazālī’s account of Qur’anic recitation offers a comparison within the Sufi tradition: it joins outward practice to inward attention and understanding. The reciter learns to receive what is read as divine address. This comparison does not establish a direct influence on the present poem; it shows why the demand for an attentive, responsive reading is familiar within Sufi accounts of devotion. [8]
Such reading takes time. A verse may need to be recited slowly, its language studied, and its meaning considered with the help of reliable commentary and teachers. The Qur’an itself calls for reflection upon its verses. Personal reflection remains answerable to the text and to responsible learning. [4]
For a parent or teacher, the relationship becomes visible in the way authority is used. A child who hears verses about mercy should encounter patience when struggling. A lesson about justice should help the powerful recognize the claim of someone who cannot compel them to listen. For the person entrusted with religious teaching, fidelity includes the care taken over a quotation and the freedom allowed to a sincere question.
Iqbal’s chapter leaves the reader with a Book to recite and a life to examine. We return to its words carrying desires, fears, and loyalties that may need to change. The relationship deepens when we are willing to make that change, and when those who live with us can recognize its effects.
[2] Muhammad Iqbal, Rumūz-i Bēkhudī, following chapter, on the preference for taqlīd over ijtihād during decline. Persian text.
[3] Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, preface and Lecture VI, “The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam.” Complete reprint PDF, PDF pages 7–8 and 200–202. These are PDF page positions, not uniform pagination across editions.
[5] William C. Chittick, “ʿErāqī, Faḵr-al-Dīn Ebrāhīm,” Encyclopaedia Iranica. Scholarly account of ʿIrāqī’s life, connection with Qūnawī, and the composition of the Lamaʿāt. Article.
[6] Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Muqaddima fī ʿulūm al-ḥadīth, sections 3 on weak reports, 9 on mursal reports, and 13 on anomalous reports. Arabic primary text; cited by section because this transcription does not establish a specific printed edition.
[8] Al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, Book VIII on Qur’anic recitation. The comparison here is supported by Edwin Elliot Calverley’s account in the introduction to The Mysteries of Worship in Islam, pp. xxv–xxvi. Digitized text.
